The Celtic Art & Cultures Web site and CD-ROM was a joint effort between myself and Dr. Dorothy Verkerk, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In the Fall of 1997, we were awarded a 1998 Information Technology grant by the Office of the Chancellor at UNC to develop an Art History course, Celtic Art and Cultures, that would be centered around technology.

Dr. Verkerk had previously taught the Celtic Art and Cultures course as a traditional lecture course. Celtic art, however, with its geometric, abstract, and rhythmical vocabulary, seemed to be an ideal topic to which to apply technology. At the same time, we felt that Web technologies have developed to the point where it would be both feasible and useful to develop course materials as Web-based multimedia and to use the Web as a means for enhanced student communication and collaboration. After developing the materials in the first half of 1998, Dr. Verkerk taught the Celtic Art and Cultures course to 27 students at UNC using the Web-site and CD-ROM I developed as the basis of the course.

The completed course materials include a 1000 image database, animations that illustrate and highlight the themes and patterns of Celtic design, QuickTimeVR images that enable the user to directly manipulate images of Celtic high crosses and other three-dimensional structures, narrated topic presentations, audio-enhanced vocabulary definitions, vocabulary quizzes, maps, and an illustrated timeline.  In addition, the students themselves completed course projects in the form of Web pages which were added to the Web site.

More Information

• Celtic Art & Cultures Web site
• EDUCAUSE Medal Winner for 1999
• Used as an example in Web Teaching Guide, a book published by Yale University Press, November, 2000
• Selected by the Internet Scout Report as a Selection of the Week for the week of October 2, 1998
• O'Kelly, K. "UNC Web site enables teaching of Celtic art." The Chapel Hill News, Sunday, July 19, 1998, p. B1.
• Detailed project description (organization, techniques used, etc.)